Oft-delayed construction due to begin in Mission Bay

TYCHE HENDRICKS, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, January 27, 2000

After almost two decades of shifting plans and deferred starts, hous ing developers expect to break ground this year at Mission Bay on the first of 6,000 proposed units, which housing advocates hope will make a dent in The City's housing crisis.

Of the 6,000 new homes, 1,700 will be set aside for San Franciscans who can't afford The City's skyrocketing rents and real estate prices.

The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency selected Shoemaker's group to build the first 100 units of affordable housing on a parcel bounded by Third, King, Fourth and Berry streets, just north of the Mission Creek channel and a block from the new Giants ballpark. Shoemaker expects construction to begin in August.

Also on that block, a for-profit real estate developer, Avalon Bay Communities, will build 250 luxury apartments and lofts, which will sell at market rates. The Avalon project, which includes a 16-story apartment tower, is to begin construction at the end of this year.

1,200-1,500 dwellings

In addition, construction of another 1,200 to 1,500 living units and 150,000 square feet of retail projects will be under way in surrounding blocks by early 2001, according to Jon Knorpp of Catellus Corp., the master developer for the 315-acre Mission Bay project.

Though some analysts believe the key to relieving the affordability crisis is through massive construction of affordable housing, Jim Chappell, executive director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, said the large quantity of new housing at Mission Bay, regardless of price, will help ease the pent-up demand.

"The need is so desperate," he said. "It takes these big slugs to make a dent in the backlog of demand. This is going to benefit every renter and everyone looking to buy a home in The City."

The new housing will be the second project to get under way at Mission Bay. In October, UC-San Francisco broke ground on its 43-acre biotechnology research center south of Mission Creek.

Much of Mission Bay will be

built on abandoned railroad yards that once belonged to the Southern Pacific Co. and later to Santa Fe Pacific Realty, which became Catellus. The first plan to urbanize the barren yards came in 1981 but languished through economic downturns and political battles.

Brown strikes a deal

In 1998, Mayor Willie Brown struck a deal with Catellus to get the project moving. Under the agreement, The City will spend $140 million to build roads, sewers, sidewalks and a water system to serve the new neighborhood.

The development will include office and light industrial uses, as well as parks, in addition to the housing, shops and restaurants and the UCSF campus.

The Mission Housing and Avalon projects will split the block from Third to Fourth streets and will face each other across a pedestrian walkway with views into grassy courtyards in the middle of the block.

Mission Housing plans to include a child-care center for 48 children and several smaller centers, which will care for a few infants each, said Shoemaker.

The affordable housing will be reserved for those who make half The City's median income or less. For a family of four, that translates to an income of $32,000. Ten percent of the units will go to people with AIDS and 20 percent to those on the waiting list for federally subsidized Section 8 housing.

The Mission Housing project consists mostly of flats for families. Half the units will have three or four bedrooms. By contrast, the market rate housing will be primarily studio and one-bedroom units.

Both developments will include shops on the ground floor. A 35,000-square-foot supermarket is due to go in across the street in a block of Catellus-developed retail and office buildings.

Linda Sobuta, an architect with SMWM, which is designing the affordable housing, said retail shops will create foot traffic in the newly built area and help produce a neighborhood feeling.

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"We wanted as many active uses along the street as possible," she said.

Added Catellus' Knorpp, "If we're most successful with this project, it will not be called a master-planned community, but just another neighborhood." &lt;

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